The Speaker's post used to be an elevated position at a comfortable distance from the tumults of party politics. That was it then.
Since 2018, the country's highest office, second only to the royal head of state, has been subject to power struggles and tacticians. Then the bourgeois parties defied the Social Democrats' claim to the post and gave the moderate Andreas Norlén the job, with the help of the Sweden Democrats. The counter move from the red-greens was to block the SD and instead give a deputy speaker position to the Left Party.
Now the rogue game is in full swing even after this year's election. The stakes were raised on Sunday evening when the right-wing parties launched Andreas Norlén as a candidate for four more years in office. A shiver can wait in the Riksdag at lunchtime on Monday.
Information to DN stated that the Social Democrats considered launching their candidate on Friday. That was not the case. Instead, DN and other media could tell that the V management threatened to vote for Norlén instead of the S candidate.
Thus, it is unclear whether the Speaker's vote on Monday will be a show of unity between the four parties that want S-leader Magdalena Andersson as prime minister. Instead, division threatens before the open curtain.
So what does it matter who gets to hold the Speaker's baton? For S, it is an obvious advantage if it is a person with whom you already have a close relationship. The speaker is a key player in the process that has just begun to get a new government in place, and which risks becoming complicated and protracted. According to DN's sources, S wants the Speaker to play a more withdrawn role this time and not turn the process into a spectacle with poetry readings and countless press meetings like in 2018.
The Speaker is certainly expected to act impartially, but we are all human. Distrustful leftists may fear that they would have an S-marked speaker against them. Then the moderate Andreas Norlén can appear as more non-dominant, without any interests in the tug-of-war between S, V, C and MP.
Regardless of who is elected by the Riksdag on Monday, a task awaits that can compare to the one that Andreas Norlén was faced with in 2018, and which took 134 days to solve.
The Left Party's efforts are significantly higher this time. Then they swallowed the January agreement's so-called humiliation clause and found themselves being relegated to the sidelines. Now they demand ministerial posts in ultimate terms. Nooshi Dadgostar showed in 2021 that she was prepared to bring down a social democratic prime minister to get her way.
In 2018, it was about getting the Center (and the Liberals) to accept something they have done many times before: to cooperate with the Social Democrats. Now it's about something completely different: a collaboration with V, which C condemned as unthinkable.
One can also imagine that the voters' patience is considerably less this time. Then it was about an epochal shift in Swedish politics: the bourgeois alliance was broken up and SD's path to influence began to be staked out. Eight years later, with basically the same party political landscape, many would expect someone to have a plan for the way forward.
The new (or new old) speaker's first task will be to set a time limit for the probe task that Magdalena Andersson has been given. If she fails, interesting choices await. Should Ulf Kristersson (M) be allowed to try? Or even Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist (C)?
And what would the right-wing parties gain from having their candidate as Speaker? The nose for S is payment enough.
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